Production
| Episode | Broadcast date | Run time | Viewers |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Part One" | 30 August 1980 (1980-08-30) | 23:33 | 5.9 |
| "Part Two" | 6 September 1980 (1980-09-06) | 20:45 | 5.0 |
| "Part Three" | 13 September 1980 (1980-09-13) | 21:21 | 5.0 |
| "Part Four" | 20 September 1980 (1980-09-20) | 21:19 | 4.5 |
Working titles for this story included The Argolins and Avalon Writer David Fisher conceived of the Foamasi as a race of organised criminals. "Foamasi" is a near-anagram of "mafioso". The episode was written as a satire of the decline of tourism in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. The alien costume used for the Foamasi was later reused in the 1981 BBC The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as the leader of the G'Gugvuntt.
A new TARDIS prop is introduced in this episode which replaces the one used since The Masque of Mandragora. This prop would be used right until the end of the original series' production in 1989. This was also the first story to use the Quantel Paintbox digital image processing system. Filming on the story ran badly over budget. As a result, the director, Lovett Bickford, was never asked back again.
Read more about this topic: The Leisure Hive
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)